Disneyland Paris Friday 09 August 2013

Friday 09 August 2013

Off to Disneyland in Paris this weekend with 27 keen and eager passengers!

This is one of our Greys Express trips so no taxi’s this morning and only three pick up points in Petersfield, Liss and Folkestone.

As with last year I have my family with me with Hollie acting as my courier/hostess. Daisy is very excited and has been looking forward to this for a while now and has no problems getting up at a very early 03:30!

I also have on board my friends Richard and Sarah with their two young children Bethany and Megan as well as Dot who seems a permanent fixture on the bus these days!

We are away from Liss at 05:45 and have plenty of time for a comfort/newspaper stop at Clackett Lane before our last pick up at Stop 24 services in Folkestone and only a couple of minutes from the shuttle terminal.

The terminal is fairly busy but with cars not coaches as we are the only bus when I pull into the parking area and tell the passengers they have 35 minutes for breakfast and/or shopping.

We are booked on the 09:36 shuttle and while waiting at the loading area a Truemans coach appears and drives straight onto the train ahead of us! And we had been waiting ten minutes to be loaded!

We are loaded immediately after and park in the carriage behind my old firm. It transpires they were booked on the 09:20 and we have been put on the same train.

Ricky is one of the Truemans drivers and he did a great job for us last week with our 5 day Mystery Tour to the Lake District and it was lovely to see him and thank him in person.

We have a decent run through to our lunch stop at the services close to peronne an hour and three quarters from Calais.

We have a picnic along with Richard and Sarah and all the girls but with the amount of food Wendy put in we could have fed the whole coach with plenty to spare!

From here we have a good run through to Paris and seeing we are early and some of the rooms may not be ready if we arrive at 15:30 (the time I said when I called the hotel) I decide to go a slightly longer way by driving down to the Peripherique and then out onto the A4 and our hotel close to the motorway at Collegian, about 10 miles from Disney.

We experience a hold up that says it will take 21 minutes to reach our junction for the motorway so I follow, with some trepidation, the sat nav that wants to take me another way and as we are only 20 minutes from the hotel I give it a go.

It certainly gets us around the traffic jam but we have to join another jam to do this and probably lose a little time instead of making the journey quicker!

Never mind we are still early and arrive at our hotel, the Novotel,  at 16:30.

On check in I ask about the breakfast times and am told they would like the group down at one time and we will be in a room away from the restaurant. Am not too happy about that and say we want to come down individually at whatever time suits each person and the breakfast if in another room must be the same as the restaurant. The receptionist says she will ask her manager and let me know but I tell her nicely that we will be down individually.

I was originally booked into the Holiday Inn we used last year but they wouldn’t let me pay the extra cost to eat in the restaurant and said we had to eat in another room with the groups having a very poor breakfast. Because of this I changed to this hotel with the promise we could enjoy breakfast at our leisure.

We all arrange to meet at 18:30 in the bar before deciding where to eat. The hotel is located on a trading estate but does have a good restaurant as well as there being an Italian restaurant and a Buffalo Grill restaurant within a five minute walk.

All nine of us sit outside by the swimming pool and enjoy a drink before taking a stroll to the Buffalo place for dinner.

We all have a mixture of steaks, burgers and ribs and in daisy’s case cold meats and cheese. All went down very well and we could sit outside where there was a play area for the little ones.

After a short walk back to the hotel we are all tired so no nightcaps tonight.

All of the families are in four bedded rooms which consist of one double bed and a pull out setee with two single beds side by side. All a little tight but nice rooms and I think the children love it like this, I know my two do. Well Daisy does, Hollie is at an age when she wants her own room!